More on saunas

[mrissa]

I don't like to share too much personal sexual information with people. There's a line in Dar Williams's "Iowa" that I just love: "But way back where I come from, we don't like to make a bother; We don't like to make our passions other people's concern. And we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn." It's like that north of the border, too. It's not that we don't have burning passions. It's that we don't really think you should have to hear about them if you don't want to. Which is why an extreeeeemely small number of you have any idea what, specifically, gets me going, and why it's going to stay that way.

But. With that ominous beginning, I would just like to say: damn, people! Saunas! It's not just that sauna time is family time (although it is), it's -- saunas! If ever you are unfortunate enough to be consulted by someone who would like to seduce a Mrissa, please remember these words: NO SAUNAS! (Also, "Go away!" and "Shut up!" and "I don't know!" and "I don't want to talk about that with you!" may be useful words to remember. I know they would be for me if someone was consulting me about seducing the friendslist on average.)

rysmiel suggested that saunas are orthogonal to sex. This is a good data point to have from someone else's viewpoint. I asked those questions so I'd know how other people react, since I already know how I react. It's useful data. There's more than one sauna scene in Thermionic Night (and its sequels), but if you run across one where someone seems to be thinking unreasonably much about very, very unsexy topics in very, very unsexy ways, it is your collective fault. For my viewpoint, saunas are not orthogonal to sex; they are antithetical to sex. Saunas are either not warm enough to be any good or nearly too hot for me to stir myself to move out of. Much less to move around doing something active within the sauna. Saunas require at least 15 minutes of lying still somewhere cool afterwards, lying absolutely still lest the world disappear on you again, if you are a mrissa. (You know what? When I pass out, the world only sometimes goes black. Mostly it goes maroon or sometimes kind of a swirly purple. Also there is the gnat ballet. Anybody else get the gnat ballet? You never read about the world going maroon in books. Like the maroon of that one T-shirt you had, scottjames, you know the one.)

So. Saunas. All righty then. Useful information to have, but I'm really surprised at how overwhelmingly it depended on characters. I guess this is a bit of my own characterization instead of a law of nature.

Dude. Saunas.

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I also find saunas antithetical to sex. I like one once in a while, I don't stay in them long enough to go red and gnat symphony, though that is what happens to me when I overheat. But hotswampyoppressive is extremely NOT sexy to me.

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

When I answered your poll I assumed that if they engaged in sex they would have either turned it off or never turned it on.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Turned on...oh, the sauna?

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

Gnat ballet! I get a sort of twinkly gnat ballet. Sometimes I perceive a slighty odd taste in my mouth. And my world goes orange before I go over. Orange spots, and then the spots spread and are edged with black, and then I'm on the floor. With luck it is because I've sat down before falling over.

You know what else I never read about in books? How surreal and alien the ring of faces looks when you come back to the world after fainting in a crowded public place. You come to, and you find yourself looking at an unfamiliar ceiling and a sea of unfamiliar people, all seen from a strange vantage point, all with various expressions of horror. I think it's more unnerving than the actual fainting. (I don't faint much any more, thank goodness.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've actually seen the ring of strange faces done well in a movie, though I can't for the life of me remember which one. It's often overdone with camera effects.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the gnat ballet.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I would also find them antithetical. I just tend to assume that all fictional characters have more of a sex drive than I do.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a matter of sex drive so much as a matter of tastes. Nobody finds everybody or everything sexy, no matter how strong their sex drive is.

(PLEASE, nobody write to correct me and say that you find the whole entire world and all its inhabitants in all possible configurations sexy. That is information I would love to do without.)

And now that we're talking about information one would like to do without, I think fictional characters weak sex drives, because they're only in the mood when it's convenient, generally, and don't go around in bitchy moods because the opportunity didn't (ahem) arise.

Oh. Umm. Is it bad that I just had a revelation about Orvokki's behavior for the first 2/3 of this book?

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Like I need more help getting hot and sweaty when doing things of a sex-variety. I'm also firmly in the antithetical camp, for all that I've only been in a sauna once.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I am apparently impervious to saunas. In general, they are cooler than the ambient summer temperature here.

I have, however, been known to take baths so hot that I had to get out because I was having heart palpitations. And I used to take a yoga class that involved an exercise room heated to 90 degrees.

I'm probably a lousy baseline. *g*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Oh, and when I faint--only done it four times, twice due to mono, once due to giving blood, and once due to low blood sugar--I get the black-tunnel closing down, limp in every limb thing.

But I can still hear and feel everything, and I'm quite conscious in there. It's quite weird.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In general, they are cooler than the ambient summer temperature here.

Reason #6712 why I am never moving to Las Vegas.

My mom says, "Never say never. I said I'd never live in Chicago, and you were born in Chicago." Heh. There's such a difference between Chicago and Las Vegas, it's not even funny.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Anything that makes me hotter and sweatier than day-to-day life here in the hellhole of SoCal is a total and complete turnoff. Sex? As if! Get your hot body away so I can find a cool place to lie and shut my eyes.

Fainting: gnat swarm. Definitely. (Also voices turning to loud buzzing.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Buzzing yes. Or sometimes squeaking, once I'm actually out. The "Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker" flavor of squeaking.

I'm not sure if he'll admit it now, but at least one person on the friendslist once said he was tempted to make "meemeeeMEEE" noises while I was out to see what they sounded like, whether it was more of the same or something else entirely.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And also: my comment to Bear about never living in Las Vegas applies to Los Angeles. Possibly double.

Appropriately, I'm listening to "Southern California Wants to Be Western New York" right now. Although, as I just told yhlee, I keep wanting to rhyme on "spork" and it's all her fault.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Total drive-by comment, but I saw your poll and thought who'd ever think of having sex in a sauna and then was just as amazed as you were when I saw the responses. FWIW, I grew up with a sauna at home, and if you're doing it right, the thing is so darn hot, I rarely want to have body parts connect, let alone connect with someone else's. :-)

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Sex in a sauna--it can be done. With sufficient motivation. Sure, it's hot. But it beats a tent with twelve other people. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Happily, all of my characters have their own bedrooms.

When I'm writing YAs, I complain about the lack of sex and hypercharged adolescent atmosphere. When I'm writing for adults, I complain about trying to get sex right in the right bits and absent in the wrong bits. I am apparently just a whiner!

Sex in a sauna?

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

These people must never, ever worry about their blood pressure...

I mean, yikes. Going to the jacuzzi was enough to make me dizzy; I'd hate to be hot and also trying to exercise moving parts vigorously!

Mack

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

This may be coming from left field, but what about all the gay bathhouses in the good ole days? I knew guys who cruised saunas. Some people *like* heat. I can't last 5 minutes, but that's me. Are we talking autobiography here or fiction? If you want to set a sex scene in a sauna, do it. Why not? Just because you wouldn't be interested doesn't mean it might not work for someone else.

Ms. Bear, I have a teeny house for rent for $600. Interested?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fiction, and I already know that the characters in question are not sexually involved with each other at this juncture. (I'm pretty sure not later, either, but there are many, many edits before me in the next book.) So I asked originally so that I'd know whether I could just go with "they're going in the sauna, of course it's not to screw like crazed weasels" or whether I needed to write more clearly to make sure people weren't reasonably expecting a sex scene and then getting disappointed. (Unreasonably is another story. People can unreasonably expect a sex scene at the slightest provocation, and it's not really my problem. But when I'm wandering nubile characters around nekkid together, that was probable cause enough that I thought I'd better ask.)

In general, I agree with "why not" as an approach; in specific, the answer is amusing, and too detailed to go into without having you read at least one and possibly two books of mine first.

Dar Williams

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

Great quote, and I also love that song. I can strum it on guitar if I have the chords out. I definitely agree that it is possible to give too much information; sharing about yourself is good, but sexual talk tends to make me uncomfortable, though it didn't use to.

I'd say I want to be on the reading feedback list for your books, but I can't commit to another project now, no matter how well-intentioned I am. Maybe further down the road, sigh.

Mack

Re: Dar Williams

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My reading feedback list is not a commitment at all, so I can put you on the filter and let you decide when the time comes. Or not. Your call, but I certainly don't consider it a promise from anyone.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Some days I think the whole sauna = sexy thing is the same as the hot tub = sexy thing. Kinda manufactured.

Personally, I prefer my exertion in places where I can safely fall asleep afterwards, and not broil/drown/etc. *g*

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

You know, I had no trouble accepting that people could have sex in saunas, in the abstract, But I have never done it, and when I stopped to wonder why, all I could think was, "But that's not what it's for. It's for relaxing and getting your sweat on and getting clean in good company."

I have memories as a little kid of, for instance, being in the sauna after I'd washed my hair, put conditioner in it, and then put my wet conditioned hair in a swimming cap - because the heat in the room really, really helped the process (the advantage of being a half finnish quadroon! I had a solution for fine, porous, brittle hair from kidhood)

And I can remember being older and having to explain to people that no, it's not a sexual thing, but damned if I want to sit in an incredibly hot room with clothes on - and that while I find it to be a good social event, I couldn't sit in sauna with just anyone. They'd have to be good friends.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I include good friends in the "family time" concept. You go in the sauna with people you like and trust.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I've only passed out once, and it was so short I was conscious again before I hit the floor. Or at least, before I would have hit the floor if not for my mother and a fast-acting burly orderly. No gnats that I can think of.

Maybe it's just the whole "teenager in Arkansas and girls with no air conditioning" experience, but I just don't see the idea of sex in a sauna as absurd. I think you'd have to be pretty motivated, though, and neither person could be especially old or sensetive to heat.

Oh, btw, I would like being on the reading feedback filter as well. I don't remember if I posted a comment when you mentioned it before.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You hadn't. I've added you.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Now that I come to think of it I suspect I would find saunas very much antithetical; it's just that your poll putting the concepts of saunas and sex in close proximity gave me a "huh ? why would someone think that ?" reaction rather than an immediate "No, don't be silly".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The reason I thought people might think it is that a lot of Americans (and, I suspect, Canadians, too) don't have a very comfortable relationship with the idea of nonsexual nudity.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I hate saunas on general principle.

What about hot tubs, though?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Finns don't have a hot tub tradition that I know about.